She smiled. “It’s not my apron. I’m filling in today. Can I sit here?”
“Yeah, sure.”
She pulled out a chair and sat. “So why’d you make it, anyway? The video.”
Zach gave a short laugh and said, “Too much electrical stimulation to the frontal lobe, I guess.”
She raised her eyebrows.
Damn she’s pretty. He couldn’t see her hair. It was tucked under an old-fashioned frilly cap with the snack bar logo on it. Her complexion was unblemished, a genetic coup for one so young. She had blue eyes and straight white teeth in a delicate mouth that all of a sudden looked familiar. Where had he seen her before?
She was waiting for him to explain, so he said, “Look, I’ve already made a complete fool out of myself. You wouldn’t believe me if I told you why.”
Her head drifted to the side as she regarded him. “Try me.”
Zach took a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “Electromagnetic pulses have been known to appear in some places prior to an earthquake. I can feel them. At least, I’ve deluded myself into thinking I can.”
“What does it feel like?”
He couldn’t figure out why she was still talking to him after his crazy revelation. In order to avoid her intense blue eyes, he looked down at the drawing on his laptop screen and said, “I don’t know, like dropping a radio in the bathtub or getting struck by lightning. I have nothing to compare it to since I’ve never felt that way before. Anyway, I’m sure I’m either insane or I’ve got some incurable disease.”
“Perhaps not.”
Something in her voice made him study her face again. Then it hit him – the reason she seemed so familiar. He looked at the digital image he’d created on the screen and back to the young woman seated across from him.
“I don’t believe this,” he said.
“What?”
Zach half-stood and reached out to tweak the hat from her head. Lush red curls tumbled out. She didn’t protest, just looked at him with those eyes and repeated, “What?”
He turned his laptop around so she could see the screen. She’d been so composed throughout the whole strange conversation that Zach was almost gratified when she gasped. She didn’t comment on the striking resemblance between herself and the warrior princess, however. Instead, she demanded, “Where did you see that crown?”
Confused, Zach said, “I didn’t. I designed it.”
She collected herself so quickly he wondered if he’d imagined the outburst. “It’s lovely. You’re very talented.”
“You don’t find it odd that this,” he gestured to the screen, “looks exactly like you?”
“Odd? No. It actually gives me a better idea of your…abilities.”
Zach paused to consider that enigmatic statement, but then he stiffened as he felt the hair on the back of his neck rise; prelude to an electromagnetic shock. “Not again,” he muttered.
“Give me your hands,” she said.
He frowned and shook his head, but she reached out and took them. A split second later, he went rigid as the pulse hit, but instead of being immobilized by an excruciating jolt, the charge flowed through his body and exited from his hands to hers. He tried to pull away before she got hurt, but she clasped his hands tightly. Four, five, six pulses and her face remained expressionless throughout. When it was over, Zach’s legs gave out and he sat, staring stupefied at the mysterious woman across from him.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“I grounded you.”
“Grounded?”
“I’ll explain later.” She stood, untied Alice’s apron and dropped it on the table. “Get your things. You’re coming with me.”
“I have class in a few minutes.”
She set her jaw and said, “Let’s go,” and Zach found himself following her out the door with his pack slung over his shoulder.
The sun had broken through the morning mist and the trees lining the parking lot waved their branches in the brisk breeze. Everything looked normal, certainly not like a major disaster was about to happen. Zach inhaled the spicy scent of eucalyptus and tried to calm his mind as he followed her to her car. She got in and cleared the passenger seat for him, tossing a packet of paper into the back seat. He saw “Enterprise Rent-a-car” on the packet and asked, “Is this a rental?”
She snapped her seatbelt and said, “Yes. Buckle up.”
“Where are we going?” Why am I going with you? Am I losing my mind?
“You’re not losing your mind, and we’re getting out of San Francisco.”
He ignored the fact that she seemed to have read his mind, and asked, “There really is going to be an earthquake, isn’t there?”
“Yes.”
“Are you a scientist?”
“Yes, but that’s not how I know the earthquake is going to happen.”
“Who are you?”
“My name is Caitlin. I need your help.”
He looked out the window. Caitlin had gotten onto the freeway and was headed toward Sacramento.
“Take me home. I need to get my mom – kidnap her if I have to.”
“It’s too late for that.”
He knew it was true. Besides, he’d already tried to warn his family, spent all weekend at it in fact, and they were likely to respond to any further attempts by slapping him in a special white jacket. At least he’d stocked the house with bottled water and batteries.
“Why do you need my help?” he asked.
“Have you always felt earthquakes before they happened?”
“No, it just started.”
“That’s because this isn’t your average earthquake.”
He believed her, believed everything she said, but had no logical reason to do so.
“What’s different about it?” he asked.
“Ever heard of ley lines?”
Of course he had. To demonstrate his knowledge, he said, “Mythical lines of power stretching between ancient monuments?”
He noticed she drove in the fast lane, well over the speed limit, aggressively tailgating anyone slower until they moved out of her way.
“Most myths have a grain of truth to them,” she said. “About fifty years ago researchers were looking into variations in the Earth’s magnetic field. They found magnetic stripes at regular intervals crossing the ocean floor, which they attributed to seafloor spreading.”
Zach looked at her profile. “But that’s not what it was?”
She shook her head. “The earth consists of layers. The core, outer core and mantle.”
He said, “Like a jawbreaker,” and then suffered through her sideways look of disapproval. “Sorry. I make jokes under pressure.”
“On top is the crust, and below that is a thin layer no one knows about, a grid of metal that circles the planet,” she said.
“So the metal is the ley lines?”
“Not exactly. The metal is an iridium alloy, a biometal. It’s not magnetic itself. The stripes the researchers detected were normal planetary magnetism. Where the magnetism was absent indicates where the iridium grid is.”
“Biometal?”
“Yes. The iridium is the reason you can feel the electromagnetic pulses, at least these specific pulses, which are not a byproduct of normal movement of the crust. The grid is causing the pulses, creating circumstances along the fault line that will lead to an earthquake.”
Zach looked out the window at a hillside covered with identical houses. He tried to ignore the fact that he was in a car with a stranger speeding away from his home, listening to a fantastical tale that she’d like him to believe was truth.
“I get what you’re saying, not that it makes sense. How come nobody ever dug up this underground metal grid?”
“It’s too far down in the lithosphere. And unfortunately, someone did hit it. Recently. That’s one of the reasons it’s…upset.”
He looked at her in disbelief for a moment before responding with a burst of laughter. “Okay, lady, you finally lost me. I�
�ve had some weird things happen to me lately, which is probably why I’ve swallowed everything you’ve said, but that’s too much. A biometal that controls the earth? I don’t think so. You can turn around at the next exit and drop me off anywhere.”
He expected her to protest, but she stepped on the brake and pulled to the shoulder. He was about to request that she at least take him off the freeway, when the car began to shake violently.
“Hang on,” she said.
Chapter Seven
Sacramento, California
After the airport shuttle dropped Kevin off at the hotel entrance, he checked in and left his luggage in the room to go for a walk along the Sacramento River. He needed to clear his head after the flight, and maybe walk off the resurgence of the nagging feeling that something bad was going to happen.
It was a windy day, and the mature palm trees lining the sidewalk moved rhythmically against a bleak overcast sky. The river water flowed drab and murky brown in comparison to the crisp blue-grey of the North Sea.
Caitlin wasn’t due to arrive for another hour or so. She’d told him she was picking someone up in San Francisco. He’d like to say she told him more, but she’d gotten his cooperation with a surprisingly minimal amount of information.
He did know there were to be four of them altogether, counting Caitlin. Four people to save the earth, one of whom at least was completely clueless as to how they were supposed to accomplish the task. That wasn’t the only thing that baffled Kevin. As real as the events of the past week had seemed, he’d had plenty of time on the trip to Texas and now the trip here, to question not only his judgment, but his sanity.
His deep certainty vied with deep doubt, back and forth. Just when he convinced himself that Caitlin was some kind of grifter pulling off the con of the century, he remembered how she’d changed, shapeshifted, from old woman to young. That would be some trick if it weren’t real, and why would she bother to fool a nobody like him? He had no money and wasn’t related to anyone with money – that he knew of. He’d been adopted, and he thought it ironic now that his mother used to call him her little changeling. Caitlin hadn’t said as much, but Kevin suspected that she’d picked him because he was like her, whatever she was.
He noticed as he walked that there weren’t very many people willing to brave the stiff breeze along the river. One woman, bundled up in a fur-lined parka as if it were minus zero, was walking her poodle, two men were jogging and talking at the same time, and a young woman was skipping stones on the shore. Kevin stopped and leaned against a rail to watch the young woman. She took her time selecting the perfect flat rock, but with an apparently careless flick of her wrist sent it skimming far out along the surface of the water. He counted ten hops before it sank in the middle of the river.
As if sensing she was being watched, she turned and looked up at him. Her black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, revealing high cheekbones and a delicately pointed chin in a smooth, light brown complexion. She was squinting up at him, just far enough away that he couldn’t see the color of her eyes.
“That’s pretty impressive,” he said.
“Nothing else to do around here.” Her tone told him more than her words. She was young and bored and discontent. And apparently not looking for conversation. She turned and walked away towards a thick dirt bank jutting over the water.
“Be that way,” he muttered.
The rail underneath his hands began to vibrate, and he glanced behind him along the path, expecting to see a heavy truck coming his way. The only thing on the path was the woman and her dog, although she, too, seemed to be trying to identify the source of the shaking. The vibration got stronger and he looked all around to find the cause. He noticed the trees seemed to be moving to and fro more emphatically and wondered if the breeze had picked up enough to make the ground shake.
Someone screamed, “Earthquake!” and he swung around to see the young black woman balanced precariously over the river.
Kevin saw that her scream wasn’t just histrionics; the dirt under her feet had shifted, and he saw a huge dark gouge sliced from the bank, moving in a slow slide towards the water. She tried jumping, but the ground beneath her crumbled and water rushed in to fill the void. It instantly turned the dirt to mud and she slipped and fell forward. Without thinking, Kevin hurdled the rail, jumped onto the shore and ran pounding across the dirt. By the time he reached her, she was thigh deep in mud and water, flailing her arms and screaming for help.
He didn’t have time to assess the situation. The earth was still quaking and the mass of dirt, with its patches of tall reeds swaying, slid inexorably forward. He leaped onto an area that was moving but seemed stable enough to hold his weight, and then stepped quickly to the nearest patch of reeds. Throwing his body onto the growth to bend it down, he yelled, “Grab on!” The young woman grasped the reeds and pulled herself hand over hand, knees churning through the muck like a marine recruit. She kept pulling until she extricated herself from the sucking mud and lay panting face to face with Kevin.
The ground stopped shaking and the dirt bank shuddered and stopped sliding. Everything was still and quiet for the moment.
“You okay?” he asked.
“I guess so.”
“Let’s get out of here.” He sat up carefully, aware that the ground may have stopped moving, but it was unlikely to be safe. They scrambled along the disrupted soil until finally making it to the pavement.
The woman in the parka gripped her poodle in her arms and asked, “Are you guys alright? Wow, that was a big one!”
If Kevin thought his daring rescue was going to get him the girl, she proved him wrong by sprinting away in the direction of the hotel like a pack of wolves was at her heels.
His addled brain had just formed the thought that she hadn’t even thanked him, when she slowed and ran backwards along the path long enough to shout, “Thank you!” He watched her lithe body wink out of sight behind some bushes. He shrugged and brushed his hands down his mud-coated jeans. Hopefully, the pipes hadn’t burst in the quake, because he’d just made a date with the hotel shower stall.
Chapter Eight
Sacramento, California
Warm water cascaded down her body, bringing thousands of goosebumps to exquisite life. Lizbeth enjoyed a series of luxurious shivers as she rotated under the spray to warm her chilled flesh. Her muddy clothes lay in a bundle on the floor of the bathroom. She’d have to hurry if she was going to get them washed and dried in the hotel laundry room before Caitlin arrived.
Caitlin.
Lizbeth wasn’t sure if she hated her or just disliked her intensely. She wouldn’t admit to being intimidated by her, that’s for sure. Bad enough the strange woman showed up and immediately won the trust of her grandmother, but then Lizbeth’s own mother told Granma to hand her over like she was some kind of slave to be bartered.
“Oh, sure, take my underaged daughter. Go save the world,” Lizbeth said as she lathered her hair with the almond-scented hotel shampoo. “It’s not like she has anything better to do.”
Since her mother had been working, Lizbeth hadn’t even had a chance to talk to her or say goodbye.
Once she was clean for the second time that day, she dressed in one of her rapidly dwindling outfits and rushed out into the hall to put yesterday’s traveling clothes and this morning’s mud-crusted jeans, t-shirt, jacket, socks and tennis shoes into the washer. After she chose “heavy load,” she lined the coins up in the slot and pushed it in.
She decided she’d best get some breakfast, or rather, brunch, since it was getting closer to noon than she’d like. She reached for the door, but it opened and a young man entered. He was not tall, maybe her height or slightly shorter, but solidly built. His brown hair was wet and slicked back with a spicy-smelling gel.
“Oh, sorry,” he said. He leaned against the door to hold it for her. In his arms was a bundle of muddy clothes.
There was no way he wouldn’t recognize her, so she waited for him to say some
thing. When he didn’t, she looked at his face. He stared at the ceiling with a carelessly aloof expression stamped on his features, the kind of look she herself might have cultivated had she been blown off.
She sighed. He did rescue her, and although saying he saved her life seemed a bit dramatic, for all she knew, the mud might have buried her alive. The least she could do was thank him properly.
She backed away from the door and waved him in, saying, “The washer on the end is free.”
“Thanks.”
She waited silently for him to get his laundry started while he ignored her. Just when she thought he was going to leave without further acknowledgement, he shut the lid and said over the sound of the shushing water, “My name’s Kevin. You want to get something to eat?”
“Lizbeth. Sure.”
When they walked into the hotel lobby, they encountered a crowd of excited people clamoring for attention at the curving marble counter. One family rushed past them, wheeled luggage clattering along the floor tile, the flapping arm of a shirt sticking out of the zipper. A large flat-screen television mounted on the wall next to the front desk had a blaring news report about the earthquake. When she’d gotten back from the river, Lizbeth had come in a side door. A few things in her room had tipped over, but the walls and ceiling were intact. She hadn’t thought the earthquake had caused much damage.
“Oh, my God,” Kevin said. He was staring at the television screen. “Look at San Francisco!”
Lizbeth watched as horrific footage shot from a helicopter news crew filming down on the city flashed on the screen. Through plumes of black smoke, the camera caught glimpses of crumbled buildings, a collapsed overpass, deep chasms in streets and highways with chunks of asphalt thrusting upward. Fires everywhere spewed flames into the sky.
Her stomach clenched in fear when the announcer came on and said that preliminary sensor readings put the quake at 7.8 on the Richter scale. Strong aftershocks were rocking the region, causing further damage. It was too soon for an accurate death toll, but hospital emergency rooms throughout the county were overflowing with casualties.
The Gossamer Crown: Book One of The Gossamer Sphere Page 3
